Wondering if anyone has recently used Priceline for their Hotel reservations in San Diego. We are planning a trip for August and want to stay in a nice hotel, but do not like that you do not get to pick which hotel you stay in. We were planning on bidding on 4 Star properties to see what we could get.

Any advice or recent bid history would be helpful.

Thanks!
Erin

PS - I have looked at www.biddingfortravel.com and gotten some prretty decent feedback.

Last month I bid on a 3 star hotel downtown and got the Radisson Harbor View for mid February.

Which hotel will be a crap shoot unless you bid a zone with only 1 4*, and looking at SD zones, only Mission Bay has 1 4*. If you look at the hotel list for other zones though, you can see your possibilites in any area and decide whether or not the choices are worth the risk.

I doubt you'll get better feedback on San Diego Priceline hotels than BFT's San Diego section - it is *very* active. You can get a great idea from that of what hotels are coming up. Use the hotel list there to determine if *any* of the hotels in your desired zones would be undesirable...

Personally, I would *NOT* be bidding this early for an August vacation. What if something changes and you must change or cancel? You can't change or cancel Priceline reservations at ALL. Why lock yourself in so early?

For now reserve a decent backup hotel that you can cancel later. You will NOT necessarily get a better deal by using Priceline (or Hotwire) early! I book most of my Priceline hotels with less than a week's notice and have gotten as good as anyone else on BFT gets. In fact you might get a better deal closer to your trip. I'd wait til June or even July myself.

Andrew

In addition to not being able to pick hotel, you can't pick amenities of hotel (bedding in your room, pool, kitchen, on coast, etc.) Still, we have gotten some great deals with Priceline. And while Andrew above gives good advice about "what if your plans change" and also gives conventional wisdom about it being too early to get good price, I decided to give it a try about 6 months out for Baltimore Inner Harbor last summer and got an incredible rate.

Also, when you say "to see what we could get" remember that once they accept your bid you own that room - if you don't like what you get there is no way to "unbook" it - your credit card has already been charged.